March 7. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz was installed as 12th rector with the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Shaw presiding. See The Musical Intelligencer‘s interview with John Harbison, in which he discusses the history of Emmanuel Music, its founder Craig Smith, The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw, Pam’s musical background, and her dedication to our music program.- September. Bishop Shaw presided at our celebration of the 150th anniversary of the church’s founding.
- Vintage Books published Mary Catherine Bateson‘s Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, in which she discusses the influence of our 9th rector, Al Kershaw (pp. 171-2 & 1979-80). See also Timeline: 1963 & 1969.
Tag Archives: clergy
2009
Our vestry called The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz to be our twelfth rector.
The Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris blessed our new garden.
Brett Cook and others in Durham NC completed the installation of Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life, which includes five murals picturing The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Installed at 117 S. Buchanan Blvd. is “Soul Roots” with an inscription from Proud Shoes: “It had taken me almost a lifetime to discover that true emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors”.
2008
March 2. The Rev. Pamela L. Wentz arrived as priest in charge.
Fall. Hartney-Greymont of Needham prepared the beds and planted shrubs and perennials in our garden, which was designed by Susan Doolittle. The stone paths were given in memory of vestry member Frank Rose.
2005
- Feb. 5. Harvard U. published Volume 5 of Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Its editor Susan Ware wrote, “It may be that when historians look back at 20th century American history, all roads will lead to Pauli Murray. . .civil rights, feminism, religion, literature, law, sexuality – no matter what the subject, there is Pauli Murray.”
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The Rev. Dr. Maureen Kemeza
After The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace retired as rector in protest of our bishop’s ban on priests officiating same-sex marriages, The Rev. Dr. Maureen Kemeza was sent as priest in charge.
2004
Ball team with The Rev. Sara Irwin (front left), The Rev. Bill Blaine Wallace (back row, orange shirt) & Emmanuelites*
June 4. Boston Globe reported that The Rev. Dr. Willliam Blaine-Wallace had performed same-sex marriages despite The Rt. Rev. Thomas Shaw‘s proscription of such in the wake of a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in May, which had made them legal.
June 20. Boston Globe quoted Bill Blaine-Wallace, who supported the Rev. I. Carter Heyward in her retirement from out diocese saying, “I want the wider community to know that a straight priest and mainstream parish are participating in constructive disobedience.”
July. Our vestry endorsed our rector’s disobedience with a statement, “Support for Same-Sex Marriage”.
Summer. Emmanuel fielded a team* for an interfaith wiffle-ball match on the Boston Common with First Church (Unitarian Universalist). Behind them are Polish freedom fighters in a sculpture called The Partisans, which has since been moved to the intersection of Congress & D Streets.
Rabbi Howard A. Berman
Bill Blaine-Wallace invited the nascent congregation Boston Jewish Spirit to hold its services as guests at Emmanuel. Rabbi Howard A. Berman became Rabbi in Residence. The first meetings of what would later become Central Reform Temple were held in our library.
*If you know any missing members of this line-up, please advise us: archivist@EmmanuelBoston.org.
- Back row from the left: Margo Risk (seated), ??, Donald Langbein, Jimmy Tirrell (straw hat), ??, Bill Blaine-Wallace, Marianne Iauco & Mary Blocher
- Front row: Sara Irwin, Kelly Reed, Hugh Doherty?, Victoria Blaine-Wallace & David York.
1997
The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace met Rabbi Howard A. Berman and began working together as the struggle for marriage equality began to unfold in Massachusetts.
Stephen Babcock welcomed congregants to our sanctuary for more than twenty years.
Having arrived in our parish in the early 1970s, Stephen Babcock served on our vestry for two years under the Rev. William Blaine Wallace. Then following The Rev. Hugh Weaver’s suggestion, he began to serve as usher and welcome congregants on Sundays. His ministry that was to last more than two decades until the Covid pandemic put an end to it. Standing outside what we now call the Babcock Doors in all seasons, he greeted each parishioner by name and helped newcomers find their way. His smile and kindliness be remembered by all who have been privileged to know him.
1996
Our first website was launched by Donald Kreider, who later served as vestry member, clerk, and treasurer.- The Rev. Dr. Deborah Little Wyman launched what became Ecclesia Ministries. She described her first efforts in a Baccalaureate address, “After two years of hanging out on park benches, subway stations, heating grates and train tunnels in Boston, during the week before Easter 1996, I had the idea that we could actually have an outdoor worshipping church. I sensed people were waiting to be gathered. That Easter I set up a folding table on Boston Common and 10 brave souls came.”
Ecclesia today sustains common cathedral, common art (which meets at Emmanuel on Wednesdays), and Boston Warm (which meets at Emmanuel on Mondays and Fridays).
See also: Timeline 1995. - Oct. 28. The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace was installed as 11th rector.
1988
- June. Organist Michael Beattie joined Emmanuel Music for rehearsals in our Music Room of Peter Sellars‘ version of Mozart’s opera Le Nozze di Figaro, which played that summer in the PepsiCo Theater in Purchase NY. Craig Smith conducted; Frank Kelley sang the part of Basilio; Jayne West, the Countess; and Susan Larson, Cherubino.
- In her “Peace Pentecost” sermon at our Cathedral Church of St. Paul, poet Denise Levertov (1923-97) emphasized the connection between contemplation and action: “If we neglect our inner lives, we destroy the sources of fruitful outer action.
Thanks to U. of California Press for this image.
But if we do not act, our inner lives become mere monuments to egotism.” At Emmanuel she founded a Peace Group to foster the links between spiritual thought and action among her fellow parishioners.
Earlier in the decade she had been attracted to Emmanuel by our social-justice activities, beautiful music and liturgy, and rector Al Kershaw, who counseled her. “He assured her that doubt was part of spiritual growth and the darkness she encountered might increase her sense of dependence and lead her to God,” says her biographer Dana Greene citing Denise’s diary entry for June 13, 1988.
Denise’s father, Paul Philip Levertoff (1878–1954), born in Belarus, an early proponent of Messianic Judaism, took holy orders in the Anglican Church and preached wearing an alb with a tallit and kippa.
The Rev. Paul Philip Levertoff
In 1922 he become director of what is now the London Diocesan Council for Work among the Jews and edited its quarterly journal, The Church and the Jews. He was a prolific writer on theological subjects in Hebrew, German, and English and translated into English the Midrash Sifre on Numbers (1926) and the Zohar (1933).
See also:
- Dana Greene. Denise Levertov: A Poet’s Life. Urbana IL: U. of Illinois Press, 2012.
- Denise Levertov. Making Peace. Breathing the Water. NY: New Directions, 1987.
- Donna Hollenberg. A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2013.
- Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey, eds. The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov. NY: New Directions, 2013.
- Paul Philip Levertoff. Love and the Messianic Age.
- Timeline: 1994
1987
- John Harbison won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his piece for chorus and chamber orchestra The Flight into Egypt.
- Harper Row published Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage, which was reprinted in 1989 by University of Tennessee Press as Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet.
See also:
1985
- March 31. Our own composer John Harbison preached on the 300th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach.
July 1. The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray died in Pittsburg PA at the age of 75. She is buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, beside her partner Irene Barlow, whose death in 1972 had led Murray to discern a call to the priesthood at Emmanuel. The Episcopal Church has designated July 1st as her feast day.
See also: